Books at their best are masterpieces that at once both entertain and teach us. Some books don’t entertain but are useful. Others entertain but lack soul. Still others are awful enough to turn us off from the reading altogether.

Book quality varies and so they are a hollow thing to count. Still, some people tally on. Audible awards badges, book clubs goad members to reach a yearly quota, and self-anointed gurus bark out that success demands reading a book-a-week. Blinkist, a book summary firm, is that last point incarnate.

Video and music is less gamified. No badges are given for watching a ton of movies or listening to 1000 songs. Maybe the striking appeal of books is that they have an air of status, of education, of culture

The appeal is akin to that of fashion people wearing gear emblazoned with logos. The wearer imagines an onlooker seeing the logo and thinking highly of the wearer. With books, someone who readily flashes their book count is hoping for the same outcome. Only the embellishment differs.

For me, when talking with people about books the question I ache to ask is not how many books they’ve read, but which ones they’ve read again and again. The answer is far more telling of what someone spends their time thinking about.